


Undercover Books

by allislaughter



Series: Wordplay: So Love Us Till Sunset [11]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Books, Gen, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27826762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allislaughter/pseuds/allislaughter
Summary: The NERD squad find an old bookstore.Time to make a library.
Series: Wordplay: So Love Us Till Sunset [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901830
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Undercover Books

**Author's Note:**

> Echo Gray belongs to user glowstickia aka glowstickia or falloutglow on tumblr

Rig stands at the edge of the empty street, looking both ways as if expecting a car to come barrelling down the abandoned roadway. Pre-war habits that take a bit of time to go away, if not for the contemplative look on his face and furrowed brow as he looks left and keeps looking left.

“What is it?” Echo asks, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Oh...” Rig waves vaguely towards the direction he was looking. “There’s a bookstore I used to go to over that way somewhere. Trying to remember where exactly...”

“A bookstore?” Echo repeats, a smile spreading across her face. “Do you want to go find it?”

“Can we?” Rig asks, his own face brightening at the thought. “I mean— It was a small store and I don’t know if it’ll still be there or if it would have been ransacked by now, but—”

“Won’t know till we look,” Echo says. She turns and waves down Nick and Deacon. “Hey! Want to find a bookstore?”

“I call dibs on Shakespeare!” Deacon calls back.

Nick snorts. “If we’re calling dibs—”

“Dibs on Poe!” Rig cuts in.

“God dammit!”

“Where do we go, Rigsby?” Echo asks.

“Oh, um...” Rig starts down the street, leaving the others to follow as he tries to pick out old landmarks now worn away by war and time. “It should be... This door here.” He points at a door with a broken glass window and only the barest remains of the store name painted on what’s still intact. “It was an old Railroader meeting place. The owner was trans too. Loved her, Pamela Dempsy...” He chuckles. “Owner of Undercover Books.”

“I like it,” Deacon hums. He tries the door, and it opens. “What do you know? Unlocked.”

“The broken window wasn’t enough of a hint?” Nick asks.

Deacon shrugs and walks in first, with the others following after. Everything’s a mess of dust and mildewy paper, but there’s still books on the shelves, in small piles on scattered furniture, and in the glass display case where the register sits, open and emptied.

Rig walks straight through to one section of the store... “All the Silver Shroud comics are gone,” he calls over.

“Damn,” Echo pouts.

“That’s the first thing you check?” Nick chuckles. “Not looking for Poe?”

“Oh, I was kidding about that,” Rig grins. “You can have those if we find any.”

Nick blinks and then narrows his eyes at Deacon. “You’re a bad influence on him.”

“I didn’t teach him that,” Deacon grins.  _ “Honest.” _ He heads over to the “classics” to start scanning the shelves.

Nick shakes his head and starts for the poetry. Echo looks through the murder mysteries muttering something about “Agatha Christie”. Rig watches the three of them search and smiles.

He stands there for a moment, listening to them shuffle around rather than looking for books himself. He lets out a small sigh and walks over to one of the book piles to see what had been pulled down and left behind. Old children’s books, many of which he had read a long time ago—plus two hundred years, he reminds himself. He traces the spines as he reads the titles. Dr. Seuss, _Charlotte’s Web,_ _The Boxcar Children—_ He flips open the cover and... yep, a list of names he remembers written on the inside. The Railroaders were not smart with their theming... He pockets the book and then pauses and looks towards the children’s section...

It takes a bit of searching—whoever organized these books by  _ color _ rather than by any sensible pattern deserves whatever end they got—but he finds the five books he’s looking for.

“Hey,” Rig looks toward Nick who is in the process of pulling a book from the shelf. “Nick, what do you think of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Are you asking because I’m a detective?” Nick asks, not looking up from his reading.

Rig grins. “Did you ever read about the  _ better _ Sherlock Holmes?”

“There’s a better Holmes?” Deacon asks over the book he’s pulled down.

Echo looks over as well. “One in the children’s section...?”

Rig holds up the first book. “His name is Basil and he’s the Great Mouse Detective and he’s hilariously perfect and one edition of one of the books in the series has a really terrible error where the first sentence of a paragraph stops mid-sentence and then starts a new paragraph all of a sudden.”

Deacon grins. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rig says. He holds the books to his chest. “Anyway, I’m stealing these, is that okay?”

“Only take what you can carry,” Echo says. “We’re not going to carry anything for you.”

“That’s fine, they’re light,” Rig says. He looks to the register and hums. “I wonder if the secret tote bags are still here...”

“I can do one better,” Deacon chimes in. “I think I saw a wheelbarrow nearby.”

“We’re making a library, aren’t we?” Nick asks.

Echo grins.  _ “Yes.” _


End file.
